Disturbance of greedy publishing to academia (original) (raw)
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During the last 2 years, there has been extensive discussion about "hijacked journals being imposed on the academic world by the huge increase in the number of bogus publishers and spurious websites". Hijackers make money by stealing the identities of legitimate journals and collecting the article processing charges on the papers that are submitted to journals. The cybercriminals have cheated thousands of professors and Ph.D. scholars mostly from developing countries and those who were in the urgent need of publishing their articles in journals that are covered by the Journal Citation Report (a Thomson Reuters' product). The fake journals targeted their victims using smart ideas both in web development step and victim selection. This paper introduces some simple methods that can be used easily to identify the fake publishers as a short to midterm solution and recommends establishing a movement for designing a new model for assessing the quality of academic research.
A credit-like rating system to determine the legitimacy of scientific journals and publishers
Scientometrics, 2021
The predatory nature of a journal is in constant debate because it depends on multiple factors, which keep evolving. The classification of a journal as being predatory, or not, is no longer exclusively associated with its open access status, by inclusion or exclusion on perceived reputable academic indexes and/or on whitelists or blacklists. Inclusion in the latter may itself be determined by a host of criteria, may be riddled with type I errors (e.g., erroneous inclusion of a truly predatory journal in a whitelist) and/or type II errors (e.g., erroneous exclusion of a truly valid scholarly journal in a whitelist). While extreme cases of predatory publishing behavior may be clear cut, with true predatory journals displaying ample predatory properties, journals in non-binary grey zones of predatory criteria are difficult to classify. They may have some legitimate properties, but also some illegitimate ones. In such cases, it might be too extreme to refer to such entities as "predatory". Simply referring to them as "potentially predatory" or "borderline predatory" also does little justice to discern a predatory entity from an unscholarly, low-quality, unprofessional, or exploitative one. Faced with the limitations caused by this gradient of predatory dimensionality, this paper introduces a novel credit-like rating system, based in part on well-known financial credit ratings companies used to assess investment risk and creditworthiness, to assess journal or publisher quality. Cognizant of the weaknesses and criticisms of these rating systems, we suggest their use as a new way to view the scholarly nature of a journal or publisher. When used as a tool to supplement, replace, or reinforce current sets of criteria used for whitelists and blacklists, this system may provide a fresh perspective to gain a better understanding of predatory publishing behavior. Our tool does not propose to offer a definitive solution to this problem.
On Good and Bad Intentions behind Anomalous Citation Patterns among Journals in Computer Sciences
arXiv (Cornell University), 2018
Scientific journals are an important choice of publication venue for most authors. Publishing in prestigious journal plays a decisive role for authors in hiring and promotions. It also determines ranking and funding decisions for research groups, institutions and even nations. In last decade, citation pressure has become intact for all scientific entities more than ever before. Unethical publication practices has started to manipulate widely used performance metric such as "impact factor" for journals and citation based indices for authors. This threatens the integrity of scientific quality and takes away deserved credit of legitimate authors and their authentic publications. In this paper we extract all possible anomalous citation patterns between journals from a Computer Science bibliographic dataset which contains more than 2,500 journals. Apart from excessive self-citations, we mostly focus on finding several patterns between two or more journals such as bi-directional mutual citations, chains, triangles, mesh, cartel relationships. On a macroscopic scale, the motivation is to understand the nature of these patterns through weighted directed graph which models how journals mutually interact through citations. On microscopic level, we differentiate between possible intentions (good or bad) behind such patterns. We see whether such patterns prevail for long period or during any specific time duration. For abnormal citation behavior, we study the nature of sudden inflation in impact factor of journals on a time basis which may occur due to addition of irrelevant and superfluous citations in such closed pattern interaction. We also study possible influences such as abrupt increase in paper count due to the presence of self-referential papers or duplicate manuscripts, author self-citation, author co-authorship network, author-editor network, publication houses etc. The entire study is done to question the reliability of existing bibliometrics, and hence, it is an urgent need to curtail their usage or redefine them.
Gaming the Metrics: Misconduct and Manipulation in Academic Research
2020
The traditional academic imperative to “publish or perish” is increasingly coupled with the newer necessity of “impact or perish”—the requirement that a publication have “impact,” as measured by a variety of metrics, including citations, views, and downloads. Gaming the Metrics examines how the increasing reliance on metrics to evaluate scholarly publications has produced radically new forms of academic fraud and misconduct. The contributors show that the metrics-based “audit culture” has changed the ecology of research, fostering the gaming and manipulation of quantitative indicators, which lead to the invention of such novel forms of misconduct as citation rings and variously rigged peer reviews. The chapters, written by both scholars and those in the trenches of academic publication, provide a map of academic fraud and misconduct today. They consider such topics as the shortcomings of metrics, the gaming of impact factors, the emergence of so-called predatory journals, the “salami slicing” of scientific findings, the rigging of global university rankings, and the creation of new watchdogs and forensic practices. Read Open Access ePub or purchase here: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/gaming-metrics
Is predatory publishing a real threat? Evidence from a large database study
Scientometrics, 2018
Using a database of potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly openaccess journals, the objective of this research is to study the penetration of predatory publications in the Brazilian academic system and the profile of authors in a cross-section empirical study. Based on a massive amount of publications from Brazilian researchers of all disciplines during the 2000-2015 period, we were able to analyze the extent of predatory publications using an econometric modeling. Descriptive statistics indicate that predatory publications represent a small overall proportion, but grew exponentially in the last 5 years. Departing from prior studies, our analysis shows that experienced researchers with a high number of non-indexed publications and PhD obtained locally are more likely to publish in predatory journals. Further analysis shows that once a journal regarded as predatory is listed in the local ranking system, the Qualis, it starts to receive more publications than non-predatory ones.
Predatory and Fake Scientific Journals/Publishers - A Global Outbreak with Rising Trend
In recent times some publishers are intensively exploiting the model of open access publishing. During the last several years, studies have shown that there was a substantial increase in the number of fake publishers and hijacked journals. These cyber criminals make money by stealing the identities of legitimate journals and collecting the article processing charges on the papers that are submitted. This is all accomplished by a well developed framework that includes web development steps, intensive e-mail marketing and victim selections. This review article strives to recommend that the Beall's list of predatory publishers and journals should be consulted every time when an author plans to submit scientific work to some of the journals that are indexed by Thomson Reuters/Institute for Scientific Information-ISI and covered by the Journal Citation Report. Also, the authors are advised to be "up to date" with new information regarding this controversial topic by informing themselves through various websites and specialized scientific portals. The review paper itself strives to summarize the most recent investigations on predatory and spurious journals/publishers which affect the entire scientific community, thus representing an outbreak with rising trend not only on national and regional level, but on global level as well.
Predatory publishing: A threat to the credibility of science
Nepal Journal of Multidisciplinary Research, 2020
Predatory journals pose a global threat to science. Young scientists and scholars are easy victims of the predatory publications. Predatory publications reduce the accuracy, reliability, and validity of the scientific works published. The predatory publications are worthless, just a waste of time, resources, money, and efforts. Predatory publications undermine the value of legitimate publications. In order to discourage predatory publications, educational and research institutions should set the rules for publication in the journals that must be indexed in web of science, Journal Citation Reports (JCR, Clarivate Analytics, formerly Thomson-Reuters) or other famous scientific databases such as Scopus, DOAJ, PubMed, and MEDLINE. Citation of articles from predatory journals should be discouraged. The students, academics, and researchers should be careful to avoid predatory publications to maintain their credentials.
Predatory Journals: A Global Threat to the Scholarly Publishing Landscape
Journal of Postgraduate Medical Institute, 2020
There has been a major trend in academic publishing from traditional print publication to open access journals and online publication in recent times. The authors now find more avenues to publish their work than before, but at the same time vulnerable to become prey to predatory journals. The term ”Predatory Journals” was first coined by Jeffrey Beall 1 , Associate Professor and librarian at the university of Colorado Denver. According to Beall predatory publisher is one“which publish counterfeit journals to exploit the open access model in which the author pays.” The most recent clear, comprehensive and consensus definition of predatory journal was formulated in April 2019 in Ottawa, Canada by 43 researchers belonging to 10 different countries. 2 Their definition reads“ Predatory journals and publishers are entities that prioritize self interest at the expense of scholarship and are characterized by false or misleading information, deviation from best editorial and publication prac...
Scholarly communications, predatory publishers and publish or perish culture in the 2020s
Library Hi Tech News, 2020
This first Data Deluge Column of the new decade focusses on converging forces which were a growing presence during the previous decade and are likely to increase in importance during this decade. These forces are open science, managing the growing glut of electronic information of which the data deluge is a part and predatory publishing. Much has been written recently on the topic of predatory publishers and predatory elements in scholarly communications. Journal database searches as well as general internet searching quickly confirm this. In fact, narrowing a search to articles published in 2019 alone still produces an overwhelming number of results. These results include not only academic journal articles but also letters to the editor, opinion pieces, news articles, blog posts, YouTube videos, copious social media comments and other examples of practically every form of electronic communication in existence. Certain opinion pieces and letters published in 2017 and 2018 were the focus of much of that discussion. For example, Sorokowski et al. (2017) reported on an investigation of predatory journals. This investigation was a sting that tested the reaction of suspect journals to the submission of an application by unqualified sham academic to become a journal editor.